1 . Every so often，someone so young does something so amazing that you can’t help but wonder how he manages it. That’s what happened the first time we heard Matthew Whitaker play the piano. Matthew is a jazz pianist who is blind，and since the age of 11，he’s been performing around the world.
Matthew Whitaker was born at 24th week. He weighed 1 pound and 11 ounces. His parents were told he had less than a 50％chance of survival. One of the many complications(并发症)he faced was a disease which led to blindness.
No one in Matthew’s family was a musician，but his grandfather bought him his first keyboard when he was 3 years old. It didn’t take long for Matthew to show that he had a gift. So the Whitakers decided to get Matthew a teacher，which proved to be difficult. “At the time，we got a lot of answers that he’s too young and they don’t know how to teach a blind child，”Moses Whitaker said. “He was 3 years old at the time. ”
Finally，Dalia Sakas agreed to meet Matthew. Dalia is the director of music studies at a music school in New York City，a school for the visually impaired. To her surprise，Matthew could 1isten to a piece of music once and then play it. “Because it is rare to meet someone of the world and I want to make that possible. ”
She did. Matthew has played in more than 200 clubs and concert halls around the world. His love of music has never been in doubt. Matthew’s latest album is called Now Hear This. One critic noted that it sounded like Matthew was playing with six hands.
1. Which word best describes Matthew as a pianist?| A．Fruitless. | B．Ordinary. |
| C．Remarkable. | D．Ambitious. |
| A．His premature birth. | B．His low weight. |
| C．His low chance of survival. | D．A disease running in his family. |
| A．His family background. | B．His lack of talent. |
| C．His age and disability. | D．His character. |
| A．Because she sympathized Matthew for his experience. |
| B．Because she was struck by Matthew’s talent for music. |
| C．Because she gave in to the insistence of Matthew’s grandfather. |
| D．Because she knew how to teach a blind student well. |
2 . Shelton Murray has been playing the didgeridoo(迪吉里杜管乐器) since he was five years old. Now 22, the musician will be travelling to the United States with the Australian Chamber Orchestra for the first time.
Mr. Murray comes from an Aboriginal (土著的) community and said his love of the didgeridoo had grown out of his culture. He was taught by his father Lazarus Murray from a young age, but said he was also inspired by his grandfather Peter Apaak Jupurrula Miller. ''My father learnt from David Blanasi. Then he taught me what he learnt from David,'' he said.
As the youngest member of a Tiwi Islander band called B2M (Bathurst to Melville) in the Northern Territory, Mr. Murray played the didgeridoo for the opening act of the Tina Arena Darwin concert in 2014. Now his didgeridoo skills have caught the attention of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, where he was invited to perform in the show The Reef Revisited, which will be touring the US next week.
''It's exciting for me to be travelling over to America, '' he said. Mr. Murray said there were challenges for young Aboriginal artists to break into the industry but said it is all about having the right attitude.
Richard Tognetti, artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, said the team was excited to have Mr. Murray join the 25 - person orchestra. ''He's bringing a really traditional approach. We respect the sound that he brings into the orchestra. We're used to the sound of a didgeridoo but playing it in LA, New York and Richmond Virginia will be interesting for the audience,'' he said.
Another member of the orchestra, Aboriginal musician Steve Pigram, said he was proud of Mr. Murray's achievement at such a young age. ''He's coming through that thing of performing in a reggae (popular music in the West Indies) rock band, same as what I did. But he's got to this kind of level a little quicker. Well it's taken me 40 years, '' he said.
1. How did Murray learn to play the didgeridoo?| A．He taught himself. | B．He learned from his grandfather. |
| C．He drew inspiration from David. | D．He followed his father' s instructions. |
| A．It's a popular local band. | B．Its members are all very young. |
| C．Its tour around the US will come soon. | D．It's a band in the Australian Chamber Orchestra. |
| A．He needed to get along with the orchestra members. |
| B．He would play a valuable part in the orchestra. |
| C．He would face lots of challenges in the US. |
| D．He needed to learn traditional approaches. |
| A．They became famous at a young age. | B．They have played in a rock band. |
| C．They came from the same city. | D．They are of the same age. |
3 . George Nakashima always insisted that he was a simple woodworker, not an artist. Even though major museums exhibited his works and the director of the American Craft Museum called him a national treasure, Mr Nakashima rejected the label of artist. For almost fifty years he simply went on shaping wood into beautiful chairs, tables, and cabinets.
Nakashima had a clear goal. He intended each piece of furniture he made to be as perfect as possible. Even making a box was an act of creation, because it produced an object that had never existed before. Initially Nakashima used local wood, sometimes from his own property. Later, he traveled to seek out English oak, Persian walnut, African zebra wood and Indian teak. He especially liked to find giant roots that had been dug out of the ground after a tree was taken down. Nakashima felt that making this wood into furniture was a way of allowing the tree to live again.
Most furniture makers prefer perfect boards, but Nakashima took pleasure in using wood with interesting knots (节疤)and cracks. These irregularities gave the wood personality and showed that the tree had lived a happy life.
He never failed to create an object that was both useful and beautiful. One early piece Nakashima designed was a three-legged chair for his small daughter, Mira, to use when she sat at the table for meals. The Mira chair became so popular that Nakashima later made both low and high versions. Another famous piece, the Conoid chair, has two legs supported by bladelike feet. Always, Nakashima's designs were precise and graceful, marked by a simplicity that revealed his love for the wood.
As the years passed, Nakashima's reputation grew and his work received many awards. His children Mira and Kevin, now adults, joined the team of crafts - people in their father's studio. Nakashima's dream of integrating work and family had come true.
1. Which of the following best describes Nakashima?| A．Generous and outgoing. | B．Honest and simple. |
| C．Capable and friendly. | D．Creative and modest. |
| A．His art work made trees live again. |
| B．He used precious wood materials. |
| C．His chairs were beautifully designed. |
| D．He was devoted to making furniture. |
| A．He loved his work and family. |
| B．He made chairs of the same style. |
| C．He sought for a simple life and art. |
| D．He was lost in researching the wood. |
| A．They had an art studio of their own. |
| B．They still lacked the ability to create art works. |
| C．They had a common interest with their father. |
| D．They enjoyed the same reputation with their father. |
4 . When it comes to the most famous 20th century painters of the United States, Grandma Moses should be mentioned, although she did not start painting until she was in her late seventies. As she once said to herself , “I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me”. No one could have had a more active old age．
She was born on a farm in New York State, one of five boys and five girls. At 12 she left home and was in domestic service until at 27 she married Thomas Moses, the hired hand of one of her employers. They farmed most of their lives, first in Virginia and then in New York State, at Eagle Bridge. She had ten children, of whom five survived; her husband died in 1927．
Grandma Moses painted a little as a child and made embroidery (刺绣) pictures as a hobby, but only changed to oils in old age because her hands became too stiff (僵硬的) to sew and she still wanted to keep busy and pass the time. Her pictures were first sold at the local drugstore and at a market and were soon noticed by a businessman who bought all that she painted. Three of the pictures were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1940 she had her first exhibition in New York. Between the 1930’s and her death, she produced some 2,000 pictures: careful and lively portrayals of the country life she had known for so long, with a wonderful sense of color and form. “I think really hard till I think of something really pretty, and then I paint it” she said．
1. What can we learn about Moses?| A．She stopped painting in her late seventies. |
| B．She still led an active life when she was old. |
| C．Her marriage life was not happy. |
| D．She painted oils as a child. |
| A．Embroidering. | B．Farming. |
| C．Nursing. | D．Painting. |
| A．Directions. | B．Stages. |
| C．Surveys. | D．Descriptions. |
| A．Grandma Moses: the Best Woman Painter |
| B．Grandma Moses and Her Farm Life |
| C．Grandma Moses and Her Exhibition |
| D．Grandma Moses : A Famous Woman Painter of 20th Century |
5 . Jazz guitarist Joel Harrison came of age in 1960s and 70s' Washington, but he never saw it as a place to build a career as an adventurous, progressive musician. Everywhere he's gone, however, he's taken the sounds of the city with him.
''Growing up in that area allowed me access to a lot of different kinds of music,'' says Harrison, 61, who's now based in New York after living in Boston and San Francisco. ''Southern music traditions-old-time music, bluegrass, country as well as jazz and R&B.''
All of those appear to some degree in Free Country, a project Harrison began in 2003 as a means of filtering (渗透) country and bluegrass compositions through a up-to-date jazz sound and sensibility. On his new album, ''Angel Band: Free Country Vol.3, ''Harrison, on guitar and vocals (演唱), and his band take on many traditional bluegrass songs. Each cut is really kind of its own, distinct sound world. Since Harrison released the first two Free Country albums, he has produced 14 other albums. The Free Country releases, though, have been his most successful, and established his reputation.
In particular, Harrison drew inspiration from Danny Gatton, a D.C. guitar hero who similarly combines the local musical currents. Harrison was a self-described adorer of Gatton, going to attend his countless performances.
Harrison is also a composer. His work, rooted in progressive Jazz but exploring multiple types, is often through-composed and highly complex. He received a Guggenheim scholarship in2010 to compose and record an, eight-movement piece. The tunes he plays with Free Country are simpler, based on conventions of folk and pop music — which, for Harrison, is a large part of their appeal.
The music that he's covering timeless, and he aims to find endless currency in its timeless simplicity by maintaining me soul of the compositions and also adding a modern context and a modern language to it.
1. What exposed Harrison to various music?| A．His growth environment. |
| B．His current place of residence. |
| C．His family background. |
| D．Touring the country. |
| A．He has released 14 albums in total so far. |
| B．He showed a new jazz style in Free Country. |
| C．He earned large profits by releasing Free Country. |
| D．He was inspired to hold many performances by Gatton. |
| A．To put modern elements into the languages. |
| B．To develop different styles based on previous jazz. |
| C．To compose more pieces and release more albums. |
| D．To seek great popularity in its permanent simplicity. |
6 . I.M. Pei, the Chinese-American, who was regarded as one of the last great modernist architects, has died at the age of 102.
Although he worked mostly in the United States, Pei will always be remembered for a European project: His redevelopment of the Louvre Museum in Paris in the 1980s. He gave us the glass and metal pyramid in the main courtyard, along with three smaller pyramids and a vast subterranean (地下的) addition to the museum entrance.
Pei was the first foreign architect to work on the Louvre in its long history, and initially his designs were fiercely opposed. But in the end, the French — and everyone else — were won over.
Winning the fifth Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983, he was thought as giving the 20th century “some of its most beautiful inside spaces and outside forms. His talent and skill in the use of materials approach the level of poetry.”
After studying architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, Pei set up his own architectural practice in New York in 1955.
Designing the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in 1964 established him as a name. His East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1978 changed people’s ideas of a museum. The site was an odd trapezoid (梯形) shape. Pei’s solution was to cut it in two. The resulting building was dramatic, light and elegant — one of the first crowd-pleasing cathedrals of modern art.
Though known as a modernist, and notable for his forms based on arrangements of simple geometric (几何的) shapes, he once urged Chinese architects to look more to their architectural tradition rather than designing in a western style.
In person, I.M. Pei was good-humored, charming and unusually modest. His working process was evolutionary, but innovation (创新) was never an intended goal.
“Stylistic originality is not my purpose,” he said. “I want to find the originality in the time, the place and the problem.”
1. What can we learn about the result of redevelopment of the Louvre Museum?| A．It was criticized by the French. |
| B．It turned out to be a success. |
| C．It made the Louvre Museum look strange. |
| D．It changed the function of the Louvre Museum. |
| A．He is a master in applying materials. |
| B．He is skilled in writing poems. |
| C．He often combines poetry and construction. |
| D．He gets inspiration from poetry in designing. |
a. Design the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.
b. Study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
c. Design the National Gallery of Art.
d. Win the fifth Pritzker Architecture Prize.
| A．abcd | B．bacd | C．bcad | D．dacd |
7 . Alma Deutscher could read music before she could read words. She composed her first piano sonata at six，her first short opera at seven，and her first full-length opera at 10.
Alma Alma，a gifted musician as well as a composer，the child prodigy，or “Little Mozart"，whose music is in the classical-romantic tradition，was on stage throughout，switching between the piano and the violin.
Her parents，mother Janie，and father Guy，are quite formal. They think deeply before they speak，and appear to be quiet. They maintain Alma is an adult when it comes to music and a normal girl in other ways.
She has always been home-schooled and is reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials when we meet. Janie，who has given up her university job，is also a huge support，home-schooling both girls. And they believe Alma wouldn't have developed in mainstream education anyway. Because her needs are different and it's quite difficult for any school.
But perhaps what most sets her apart is the intensity(强度)of her imagination. Spend time with Alma and you are struck by how often she talks about Transylvanian，which is unrelated to the region in Romania. "I must have heard the name somewhere，because I didn't know it was a real place until much later，"she says.
Transylvanian is" my own land with its own language and there are beautiful composers there，named Antonin Yellow sink and Ashy and Shell and Flare”. Transylvanian is outside，inside；everywhere and nowhere.
She has written biographies about the composers, created a magazine, Paris Flash, for the inhabitants, and even composed a Transylvanian national anthem. Her father believes her musical ability is a sign of this imagination. "It all pours out like a volcano," he says.
1. What can we learn about Alma from the first two paragraphs?| A．She is too young to be a musician. |
| B．She is a wonder child on music. |
| C．She is a hard-working child on music. |
| D．Her music works are well-known around the world. |
| A．Because she didn't like school. |
| B．Because of her special needs. |
| C．Because her mother lost her job. |
| D．Because she wanted to stay with her sister. |
| A．Transylvanian is a place in Alma's city. |
| B．Transylvanian is a place in the book Alma read. |
| C．Transylvanian is a place that Alma imagined. |
| D．Transylvanian is a group for musicians and composers. |
| A．Her rich imagination. | B．Her parents' influence. |
| C．Her teachers' instruction. | D．Her hardwork on music. |
8 . I.M. Pei, the Chinese-American, who was regarded as one of the last great modernist architects, has died at the age of 102.
Although he worked mostly in the United States, Pei will always be remembered for a European project: His redevelopment of the Louvre Museum in Paris in the 1980s. He gave us the glass and metal pyramid in the main courtyard, along with three smaller pyramids and a vast subterranean (地下的) addition to the museum entrance.
Pei was the first foreign architect to work on the Louvre in its long history, and initially his designs were fiercely opposed. But in the end, the French — and everyone else — were won over. Winning the fifth Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983, he was thought as giving the 20th century “some of its most beautiful inside spaces and outside forms … His talent and skill in the use of materials approach the level of poetry.”
After studying architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, Pei set up his own architectural practice in New York in 1955.
Designing the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in 1964 established him as a name. His East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1978 changed people’s ideas of a museum. The site was an odd trapezoid (梯形) shape. Pei’s solution was to cut it in two. The resulting building was dramatic, light and elegant — one of the first crowd-pleasing cathedrals of modern art.
Though known as a modernist, and notable for his forms based on arrangements of simple geometric ( 几何的) shapes, he once urged Chinese architects to look more to their architectural tradition rather than designing in a western style.
In person, I.M. Pei was good-humored, charming and unusually modest. His working process was evolutionary, but innovation (创新) was never an intended goal.
“Stylistic originality is not my purpose,” he said. “I want to find the originality in the time, the place and the problem.”
1. What can we learn about the result of redevelopment of the Louvre Museum?| A．It was criticized by the French. |
| B．It was a success. |
| C．It made the Louvre Museum looks strange. |
| D．It changed the function of the Louvre Museum. |
| A．He is a master in applying materials. |
| B．He is skilled in writing poems. |
| C．He often combines poetry and construction. |
| D．He gets inspiration from poetry in designing. |
a. Design the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.
b. Study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
c. Design the National Gallery of Art.
d. Win the fifth Pritzker Architecture Prize.
| A．abcd | B．bacd | C．bcad | D．dacd |
| A．Innovation was his first goal in design. |
| B．He was talented and serious. |
| C．He preferred western style to the east. |
| D．He liked simple geometric shapes. |
9 . This year marks the 170th anniversary of Paul Gauguin’s birth. He lived for just 54 years but he packed his brief life with activity.
The French painter spent his early childhood in Peru before returning to France. As an adult, he continued to travel a lot. Most famously, he spent much of the last decade of his life in Tahiti, an island in southern Pacific Ocean. Indeed, Gauguin is best known for his colorful paintings of Tahitians and their culture.
The restlessness of this great painter has been normal among modern artists since the middle of the 19th century. They’re never satisfied for long with a certain style or way of life. Once something becomes conventional, it’s turned down.
The artistic culture that Gauguin developed from was that of Impressionism (印象派). Painters like Claude Monet had wanted to paint how they saw the world, not how their teachers taught them it should be seen. Gauguin, and similar artists like his friend Vincent van Gogh, moved even further away from “respectable” art than the Impressionists. For them, it was not simply a matter of seeing the world differently, but feeling and thinking about it differently, too.
Gauguin saw, felt and thought differently from most members of European society. He thought that European culture was too fancy and notspontaneous. This is why he turned to the traditions of other parts of the world, like Africa, and, eventually, Tahiti. Artists like Gauguin used the word “primitive” for these cultures, but not as a negative term. For him, Europe, in becoming modern, industrial and scientific, seemed less natural than other parts of the world.
In truth, Gauguin’s paintings may be unconventional but they are certainly not “primitive”. They are the work of a painter with great awareness of what he was doing. It was this awareness that made him such an important painter for those that came after, in the 20th century. When we look closely at the works of Gauguin we begin to understand Pablo Picasso, and especially Henri Matisse, a little better.
1. What can we infer about Gauguin’s life?| A．He had an unhappy childhood. | B．He lived most of his life in Peru. |
| C．He enjoyed painting in Tahiti. | D．He preferred a traditional life style. |
| A．To explain why Gauguin’s works were popular. |
| B．To point out where Gauguin’s inspiration came from. |
| C．To show Gauguin’s different understanding of painting. |
| D．To compare Gauguin’s painting style with Vincent van Gogh’s. |
| A．Natural. | B．Modern. | C．Industrial. | D．Scientific. |
| A．their styles are different from Gauguin’s | B．great artists share many similarities |
| C．they are as important as Gauguin | D．Gauguin’s influence on their works |
10 . Pablo Picasso was an amazing painter who experimented with colour and shape. Picasso wanted to find ways to paint emotions. His paintings opened people's minds and showed there were many ways to express ideas.
Born in Spain in 1881, Picasso learned to paint at an early age because his father was a painter. At fourteen,Picasso began attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelnoa. Although Picasso did well,his teacher wouldn't let him develop his own style. So he change schools. Though his new teachers praised his work, they still criticized it as being too different. Picasso made up his mind to express himself in his own way.
Disappointed with his career in Spain, nineteen-year-old Picasso moved to Pairs, where he learned about abstract art. He started copying famous paintings so he could paint in any style. However, an important development in his own style came along when his best friend committed suicide（自杀）. Picasso was so upset that he painted only in blue and gray. He painted the poor and the disabled. This is known as his "Blue Period".
In 1904, his painting style changed again when he fall in love with an artist's model. He began painting everything with colors of rose,red and pink.He mainly painted artists during this time,called his "Rose Period."
Picasso's style went through style change as he began to learn African art and geometry（几何学）. Instead of painting with different colors, he used different shapes. His paintings made people surprise because they looked like they had been broken and put back together incorrectly. Everything was geometric and abstract. Picasso's new style became known as "Cubism." Cubism was so unique it became very popular.
Pablo Picasso in most remembered for his Blue, Rose, and Cubist periods. But Picasso never stopped experimenting with painting.His painting styles kept changing until his death at the age of ninety-two.
1. Picasso's school teachers in Spain_______.| A．taught him a new way of painting. |
| B．Praised him for good grades. |
| C．made him drop out of school. |
| D．disliked his creativity |
| A．What Picasso learned in Paris. |
| B．The death of Picasso's best friend. |
| C．How the Blue Period came into being. |
| D．The copies of Picasso's paintings. |
| A．Sadness. | B．Love. |
| C．Flowers. | D．Friendship |
| A．It was thought to be unusual. |
| B．It has objects that look real. |
| C．It uses the same shapes. |
| D．It was inspired by African buildings. |
